Malena “Male” García Garasa’s parents lived in Cura Brochero and that is why she was born in the capital Córdoba, but after a few months they moved to Mar del Plata, the tourist city located in the southeast of the province of Buenos Aires. There she grew and trained until the young woman decided to leave to try her luck in Australia.
Male started working at the age of 16, in a famous fast food chain, while studying English because he dreamed of traveling the world and getting to know England. She was a good athlete and played a lot of volleyball. “But with the economic situation of our country, to achieve that, you have to save ‘little by little’ -he laments- and I was able to do it because in that company you can work as a minor and the salaries, although they are not high, For those who are studying and live at home with their parents, like me, it is useful, since you can work 4 or 6 hours a day and it also disciplines you”, he reflects.
“In 2018, at the age of 17, I had the pleasure of traveling to England as a backpacker. And to think that I said that I was never going to work in that fast food chain, when I returned I continued in that company and I was able to pay for my degree. I studied a technical degree in Marketing with a specialization in retail. Later, my first job in this field was in an agricultural software company”, he continues.
Male tells that he was very comfortable, working on what he had chosen to study, but since he kept dreaming of traveling, he looked attentively at the portal I cheer up who tries to travel and work around the world, when suddenly, through it, he received a proposal to go to work as a tractor driver in Australia and he did not hesitate. He was already of age, he soon got the visa and there he went.
“I arrived in Sydney on January 10 of this year,” she recounts her journey. Upon arrival at the airport, my suitcase had been lost, but happily it appeared after 3 days. I went by train to the hostel, in Bondi Beach, a neighborhood on the outskirts, with beaches where surfing is practiced a lot. The next day I took a plane to Perth, which is in the extreme west of Australia, and spent the night there. The next day I took a train to Merredin, where I spent another night and in the morning they picked me up by car to travel an hour and a half to Bodallin. There would be my job, which would consist of sowing by machine for an agricultural company”.
Male began to tell about his new job: “Upon arrival, I saw huge, state-of-the-art John Deere tractors, which I had never seen in Argentina. Most of them ask you for previous experience, because you are going to drive million-dollar machines for them, but since it was a young company, it wasn’t that demanding, and they took me because I told them I knew how to drive, although I didn’t clarify that I had never driven. not even a small tractor”.
“The contract was for 10 weeks, which was the sowing period. I started on March 20 with a ‘casual’ contract. It means they could extend it or reduce it. They can be ‘part time’, from 4 to 6 hours, or ‘full time’, from 8 hours. The employee can resign whenever he wants, and more is paid than another contract, which is more formal and secure. It ended on May 31,” he continues.
“They gave us a house and food, but that is not common for them to include it and some charge you from 80 to 150 Australian dollars for accommodation. The houses that they gave us to live in were impeccable. At first we ate a lot of frozen food, until they gave us a cook. We had a Sunday off every two weeks and we made roasts, and empanadas that a Cordovan made, Nicolás. I made brownie or flan for dessert. We lit bonfires at dusk and talked a lot, because we were a ‘re-cute’ group, between 30 and 40 young people, from Argentina, Australia, Britain and even a woman from Mar del Plata with a German boyfriend and boys from Zambia, Africa. They saw us as strange because we drank mate”.
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“At first they trained us to handle ‘similar’ machines –continues Male-, but I gained confidence because these modern tractors manage themselves, by compass, they are automatic. They monitored us through an app and had full control of our movements. Then it took us 20 days to transport the machines and calibrate them. In the end, the job consisted of pulling the seeder and we planted canola, then barley, and finally a particular kind of wheat. They gave you the choice of shifts from 6 AM to 6 PM, or at night, and I hated the night shift.”
The woman from Mar del Plata continues detailing: “We Argentines made the fewest mistakes. Between the lines, we did not leave an inch without sowing. I saw beautiful sunrises and sunsets, and saw many kangaroos go by. We got to work 170 hours a fortnight and we ended the days so exhausted that we just wanted to eat quickly and sleep. There were lots full of stones and we called them ‘nightmare’. There were tracked tractors. There were lots with dunes and they told us to plant them too”.
“We competed with each other to see who could plant the most. We had to drive at 9 kilometers per hour. I learned a lot, it was a huge experience for me. My greatest pride was that I never broke a machine. In two and a half months we broke a record having planted 30,000 hectares”.
Malena describes the financial issue: “We were paid AU$28 per hour, and overtime was paid AU$33 after 76 hours worked. We always tried to pass each other. Most of us earned between 1,600 and 2,000 Australian dollars per week, which would be about 1,072 to almost 1,340 US dollars (1 Australian dollar = US$0.67 US). Here they discount 15% of the salary in taxes to the State. Some jobs give you accommodation and discount A$225 per week, but rent is very difficult to get.”
“Part of my savings I sent to my parents and gave them a trip to Europe. But if I kept it all, I could live 4 months without working. Maybe I’ll buy a car and I want to travel to Southeast Asia in January 2024 to meet.
“As soon as I finished working during the planting season – Male is finishing – I took a plane and came to work in Cooma, at a snow store, in the largest chain in the southern hemisphere. They offered me to transfer to a branch in Japan, but I did not accept. We are 125 employees and no one speaks Spanish. They pay me between 30 and 40 Australian dollars an hour. I return very late to sleep, but I walk quietly down the street, which I couldn’t do in Mar del Plata, and that makes me not want to return to my country. The contract is until October.
But Malena concludes that not everything is rosy and values her identity: “The harvest will be from November 1 to mid-December and I have already agreed to return to the farms because I loved rural work. But I would also study some computer programming. For now I enjoy this nomadic life of meeting people from such diverse cultures. Australia has paradisiacal beaches and wonderful landscapes. But here they sell you that this is ‘The First World’ and I don’t think it is”.
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“Breakfast mate, but I can get yerba for A$20 to A$25 a kilo. I was astonished to see that the youth here smoke too much, drink a lot of alcohol and use drugs frequently, because since they have a comfortable life, they create problems for themselves and blow their heads off. When they see me drink mate, they ask me what drug it is, and they are surprised when I tell them that I don’t take drugs. I invite them, they blow the bulb and in general they don’t like it”.
“In the tractors they smoked inside the cabin and on the day of the franc they get drunk until they didn’t know each other. One night I saw 600 cans of beer go down for 40 gringos. The food is bland and they eat a lot of ‘quickies’ because they are cheap here. I downloaded a folklore ‘play list’ and here I am the first to raise the Argentine flag. Because Argentines, in all parts of the world, are ‘top of the range’”.
We dedicate the song “Cocina ‘e chacra” to Malena García Garasa, by Don Luis Domingo Berho -who lived in Mar del Plata, although he was born in what used to be its capital, Lobería- by Alberto Merlo.
2023-08-02 13:46:02
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